I finally managed to set aside some time to bottle both banning (my wild blonde) as well as my turbid mash lambic that I had aged on local apricots.

• for a wild beer aged for over 14 months with multiple varieties of lacto, brett, and pedio, banning finished surprisingly high at 1.01, for an abv of 7.08%.  it is deep gold in color with a complex funky aroma and an assertive farmhouse brett flavor with plenty of smooth acidity.
• I kegged five gallons, bottled another five with rockpile yeast as per my earlier method, and racked another two onto the leftover apricots in my 2.5 gallon better bottle once I had racked and bottled my lambic (to see how much flavor and aroma can be extracted from second use fruit).
• speaking of lambic – after six months on a pound and a half of apricots, two gallons of my original batch had dropped to a final gravity of 0.99(!) for an abv of 7.19%.  upon examining my gravity sample I was greeted with the most amazing aroma I have ever experienced in all of my brewing days – fresh, ripe, sweet apricot melded perfectly with a background of complex earthy funk.  the sample was a crystal clear pale gold with a clean acidity and subtle, complex funk and apricot.  I can’t wait for this one to carb up for a special occasion, and will definitely be aging more of my sours (and especially my lambic) on fruit in the future.

last weekend I finished up the last of my four “house” sours – cuvee de banning.

• after finishing my first “american-style” sour (cuvee de cabrillo), I decided to toss four “house” sours into my brewing pipeline, such that after a year’s time, a new year-aged sour would be available for bottling every three months.  the pipeline is filled as follows:
• cuvee de cabrillo (dark strong sour) – January
• cuvee de blanc (dark “mild” sour) – April
• cuvee de vizcaino (golden strong sour) – July
• cuvee de banning (blonde sour) – October
• as noted above, banning is a sour blond ale inspired by various recipes for russian river’s temptation.  the recipe is as follows (for 13 gals @ 80% efficiency):

• 26.00 lb	Pale Malt (2 Row) Bel (3.0 SRM)	Grain	94.55 %
  1.50 lb	White Wheat Malt (2.4 SRM)	Grain	5.45 %
  3.00 oz	Saaz [2.00 %] (60 min)	Hops	7.6 IBU
  0.50 oz	Saaz [2.00 %] (30 min)	Hops	1.0 IBU
  0.50 oz	Saaz [2.00 %] (5 min)	Hops	0.3 IBU

• I used some of my stash of aged hops from seven bridges for a sub-10 IBU count and pitched a starter made from a vial of white labs WLP655 and dregs from bottles of RR’s consecration, two brothers’ askew, and drie fonteinen oude geuze.  after 4-5 days, the starter had developed a healthy pellicle and was smelling pretty funky when I pitched it at 72F.
• I also had MV over and whipped up a batch of belgian blonde for his upcoming wedding, and he took home a bag of spent grains to make some dog treats.  congrats MV, and enjoy the brew!